


Acadæmia

by atreic



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:17:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atreic/pseuds/atreic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Marisa arrives at Oxford for the first time, her aims are to study hard and devote herself to experimental theology.  However when she finds herself sharing the chapel with a young Lord Asriel things do not go entirely as she planned them...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acadæmia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



It was a relief that school was closed for the summer, and an even greater relief not to be returning home. Marisa stared out of the window of the steam train as it pulled into Oxford station, and felt a shiver of anticipation at her first glimpse of the towers and spires of the city. She wanted to remain there savouring the moment, but her monkey dæmon, Ozymandias, was already scampering over to the carriage door, so she pulled on her thin raincoat, scooped him into her arms and stepped out onto the platform.

A large cheerful porter, his dæmon an Old English sheepdog, noticed the nervous sixteen year old disembark from the train. She was clutching her travelling bag in one hand and the small brown figure of her dæmon in the other, watching the bustle of the station warily.

“You lost, miss?” he asked politely.

She jumped in response. “No, I’m fine, I just...” Pulling herself together, she tried again. “I’m going to St Sophia’s. I’ve only just arrived in the city.”

“Not to worry, duck. It’s no more than twenty minutes’ walk, and you can get a map from the office over there. If you’ve got luggage to send on that’s the same place to get it sorted.”

“Thank you.” She smiled, and her dark eyes lit up with a brilliance that was breathtaking. With her dæmon riding on her shoulder she turned and walked over to the office, the porter watching her go.

***

Thirty minutes later she had arrived at St Sophia’s, introduced herself to the porters, and been shown to the room of Dr Hannah Relf. Dr Relf turned out to be a young scholar in her early forties, most unlike the dowdy grey-haired woman she had been expecting. Her dæmon was a bright eyed marmoset who immediately put Ozymandias at his ease. They chattered excitedly together, scampering up and down the bookcases, while Dr Relf poured two cups of tea.

“Well, Marisa, I am pleased you found us easily. The journey wasn’t too difficult?”

“No, ma’am, the trains were all on time.” Marisa fell quiet, but her dæmon climbed up into her lap and encouraged her to go on. “It’s good to finally be here - I’ve been looking forward to the programme since I was chosen.”

“The pleasure is entirely ours. This is only the second year St Sophia’s has run this placement scheme, and the competition was if anything stronger this year than last year. It’s always disappointing we can’t take more. There is such a shortage of women in experimental theology, and so few of the girls’ schools teach to the levels we need. Why, fewer than one in five of them provide basic anbarology or philosophical mathematics, even at school cert level! The _potential_ that this country is leaving neglected is shameful, shameful...” By this point Dr Relf was gesticulating wildly with her teacup,and her dæmon’s fur was bristling. Marisa found herself uncertain whether to shrink back into her chair or burst into giggles.

“Anyway, dear... and do call me Hannah, we’ll both be sick of ‘Dr Relf’ by the time the summer’s over... that’s why St Sophia’s invented the summer placements. Find bright young women _before_ they tie themselves to some gormless young man and settle down to raise children and throw dinner parties, and give them a taste of what experimental theology is _really_ about. Our theory is that it’s like poppy: make sure that the first taste’s free and then they’ll have to come back to us.” Hannah smiled at this, and Marisa smiled back, feeling Ozymandias relax under her hands.

“You’ll have lots to worry about for the first few days, just finding your room and turning up for meals on time, so I won’t burden you with too many details now. The only thing you really need to be aware of is that our actual time in the Chapel is very limited. The college has an arrangement with Jordan, you see – far more cost effective to borrow their instruments for an hour or so than try to compete with the kind of set-up they’ve got there, and it gets round all the Magisterium’s prohibitions about what it’s permissible for a woman’s college to actually own. The only downside is that it means we have to use the facilities only when they’re not, which at the moment is for the hour either side of sunrise and sunset. So it’s probably best to prioritise your experimental work as soon as you’ve met with your tutor, as it’s amazing how quickly the time will go...”

And it was amazing how quickly the time went, for it seemed as though Marisa had only been chatting to Dr Relf for a few minutes, but they had discussed her life at school (although she did not go into details, for there was no need for that, not _here_ ), her planned research topic, the day to day life of St Sophia’s... and already the sun was setting over the trees at the edge of the gardens. She caught herself yawning, and Ozymandias lifted a weary head from where he lay curled up in the last ray of sun on the windowsill.

“Dear child, I have kept you here far too long,” said Dr Relf, sweeping the biscuit crumbs off the table and into the bin. “Go and unpack – there will be time enough for talk over the next few weeks.”

So Marisa gathered Ozymandias up into her arms, crossed the quadrangle, and climbed the dark wooden staircase to the room that would be her home for the summer. But her head was still spinning with the excitement of the day, and so instead of going straight to bed she sat at the desk in the window, looking out over the flowering gardens to where the Cherwell flowed hidden behind the dark trees, running all that had happened over and over in her mind as the last of the light slipped away.

***

Dr Relf had been right about many things, but she had been wrong that there would be time to talk. Over the next four weeks Marisa found herself constantly rushing – from bed to the Chapel for the morning’s experiments, back to hall for breakfast, down to Bodley’s library to study, back to St Sophia’s for lunch, afternoon tutorials, the Oratory service, dinner in hall, and finally back to Jordan to finish off the day’s experiments before collapsing back into bed. She had never found herself more tired in her life – and she had never been so happy. It was the first time in her life that she’d had the freedom to study so wholeheartedly – so different from her school, where the other girls were swift to notice anyone who raised their head above the parapet of conformity, and cruel in their dealings with it. Here there was space to be herself and to do what she wanted. Days would go by when there was no need to talk to anyone but her tutors and Ozymandias, and bit by bit her experimental work was starting to fall into place...

***

The sun had set at nine, which meant that Marisa had less than an hour to finish her experiment in the Chapel. It was the most valuable hour too, as this week’s detailed work on anbarographs could only be completed in the dark. With the sunlight fading and the lights extinguished, Marisa continued her measurements in the crepuscular room, taking her notes by the glow of a single shielded candle. She was tired - the deep, happy tiredness that comes from being immersed in a rewarding but difficult job – and so she did not at first hear the heavy door as it creaked open.

“Asriel, it’s Woman’s Hour. You know we shouldn’t be in here.” The voice was young and plummy, with a wheedling note that spoke of uncertainty and fear. At the sound Ozymandias scampered down from the experiment to crouch under Marisa’s skirts.

“The building’s empty, Edward. It’s ten o’clock at night, all the lights are out, and besides, it’s the summer vacation. Every scholar who isn’t genuinely on leave has put in a bid to go and research ‘how lovely on the mountains are the feet of the Almighty’, or whether they can espy heaven on a beach of sand. They’re out of the city, and if it wasn’t for the fact I need this apparatus working before I go North in a week, I would be too.” The second voice was no older, but had a power and depth to it that the other lacked.

A pool of light appeared in the far corner of the Chapel. Marisa drew back into the shadows. She could see the speakers now. The first, Edward, was a fair featured young man, but he was overshadowed by the second. Asriel was a tall man with powerful shoulders and dark eyes. His dæmon was a large snow leopard, whose spotted coat shone glossy in the lamp-light. They had moved over to a workbench where a set of philosophical instruments lay, sprouting aerials, wires and porcelain insulations in a confounding array.

“Well, it’s not as though I’d object to bumping into a few female scholars. Making your own entertainment’s fine, but this time last year when they had that summer student... now _those_ were good days. Still, the last thing we need is to get into trouble with the authorities _now_ ,” Edward whined.

The snow leopard pounced, and caught Edward’s dæmon neatly between her paws. “Only _fine_ , Coulter?” Asriel purred, leaning over where Edward was crouched, working on the machinery. “Because if you’re not enjoying it... well, I wouldn’t want to be _tedious_.” He placed one strong hand on Edward’s shoulder, using the other to turn his face round towards him. Edward’s dæmon writhed under Stelmaria’s paws, baring her delicate underbelly to the snow-leopard’s strong teeth, but made no attempt to escape. Asriel bent down towards Edward.

“Asriel! Not here in the Chapel!” Edward hissed. Asriel sighed and turned back to the equipment, and Stelmaria released Edward’s dæmon and sauntered away to lie, sphinx-like, at Asriel’s feet.

“Well, I can’t see a reprise of last summer,” Asriel said lazily. “The skirt they’ve got this year is so uptight you’d think someone had stuck a cloud-pine branch up her backside. I don’t think I’ve heard her say a friendly word to anyone since she got here.”

Edward was quick to agree. “She does nothing but scuttle round with her head buried in books whispering to that damned ugly monkey of hers. And she jumps if you pass her in the quad. Not a patch on last summer, if you ask me.”

Marisa blushed bright red at the overheard conversation, and Ozymandias leapt to the table, teeth gnashing and fur standing on end. She stroked him hastily, trying to quieten him before the sound carried through the echoey chapel.

“Damn,” cursed Asriel. “I left the calibrator in your room. Be a pet and fetch it, would you, Coulter? You know they won’t let me into Magdalen without you at this time of night, and there’s no point us both going.” Edward’s dæmon bristled grumpily, but Stelmaria opened one green eye and lazily flicked her tail, and Edward left without further complaint.

“You can come out now,” Asriel said clearly, as the heavy door creaked closed. “There’s no point hiding; I know you’re here.”

Marisa walked into the pool of light, her fingers tightly twined into Ozymandias’s hair. He was shaking, and she wasn’t sure if it was with fear or rage. “You know I’m here? Why in the name of all that’s holy would you say such things if you knew I was here? What are you playing at?”

“Oh, come now,” replied Asriel sardonically, “there wasn’t anything said that wasn’t true. And it will probably do you a world of good to hear it. You’ll be grateful to me in the end, you know.”

The monkey leapt out of Marisa’s arms, ran across the floor and slashed out at Stelmaria with sharp black claws. “How dare you! I’ll report you! You were in the Chapel when it was St Sophia’s session and you had no right to be!”

Stelmaria uttered a low, soft warning growl, and Asriel pulled out a pocket watch. “Correct, but you will notice it’s now half past ten, and the only one of us with any right to be here currently is me. Are you still quite so keen to bring this little altercation to the awareness of the authorities? I had you marked out as having more brains that that.”

Marisa turned pale, and Ozymandias scampered back to her arms. “Half ten? But... St Sophia’s will be locked already, and I’ll have to wake the night porter, and I have to be back before ten fifteen at the latest...”

“Well, you shouldn’t have stayed up so late spying on us then. Besides, it’s easily solved. My set’s got a sitting room; you can sleep on the couch. No-one need ever know.”

“I’m sure I’d be safer on a bench in the University Parks than staying with you! I’ll...” Marisa stifled a sob, more of anger and frustration than fear, and Asriel moved closer. He looked down into her beautiful young face, shining eyes framed by dark hair, still tucked back behind her ears from her studies. He reached out to push back a strand which had fallen forward, and she felt his touch like an anbaric spark.

The door creaked again, and Marisa jumped back into the shadows. Edward appeared in the pool of light, empty handed. “I’ve searched all over for it, Asriel, but it just isn’t there.”

Asriel turned, Stelmaria calm at his feet, only her tail twitching. “Sorry Edward, old chap, I found it on the counter just after you’d left. Must have been here all along. My mistake. Anyway, I’ve finished all that needs doing here, so it’s time to turn in for the night, I’d say.”

Edward’s dæmon growled briefly, then gave in with a sigh, and crouched nose-to-nose with Stelmaria. “Do you want to walk me back to Magdalene, then? I’ve had quite enough of being out in the cold on my own, and I’ve got some poppy back at mine.”

“Not tonight, Coulter, I’m tired. I’ll see you out at the Anbaric Park for lunch tomorrow? I’ve a tutorial there at two.”

“Fine,” Edward muttered, scooping up his dæmon and stalking towards the door. “Just fine.”

As the door slammed, Marisa crept back out of the shadows. “You didn’t give me away,” she said curiously.

“Of course not,” said Asriel. “You’re far too fascinating a combination – with those looks and those brains you could be running the world by now, but instead you go out of your way to make everyone you meet hostile to you. One could almost say that wasn’t very... clever.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Ozymandias crept closer to Stelmaria, who lay still, the lamplight gleaming softly on her coat. The monkey stared, fascinated with the play of light on the beautiful smooth spots.

“Of course you don’t. So you’re going to come up to my set, and spend the night finding out. It’s that or go back to St Sophia’s and disgrace.” Almost without Marisa noticing, Stelmaria had caught the monkey’s fur in her sharp claws, and Ozymandias was swooning back, eyes closed. Marisa looked up at Asriel’s flashing eyes, and knew that she was lost.

***

The first thing Asriel did when they returned to his set was to open a bottle of Tokay and decant it. The second was to take her in his arms and kiss her deeply. She lost herself to him, feeling soft and light in his arms. Never before had someone dared to call her beautiful, never before had someone seen her flaws so frankly. So she gave herself up to him, not because she trusted him, but in spite of the fact she didn’t, in case such a moment with such a man would never come again.

Eventually, sated and lying in each other’s arms, they made time to talk. Between sips of the golden wine she told him everything, her cruel treatment at her fine old school, the ridicule she’d received when she’d applied for the place at St Sophia’s, her joy during her weeks in Oxford. She told him of the work she’d been doing, and how finally she was starting to unpick the mysteries behind the anbarographs she was developing. She talked as teenagers will when they find for the first time in their life someone who wants to listen, and who seems to understand. And he watched and stroked her dark hair, and topped up her glass when it was low, and Stelmaria lay at the foot of the bed purring softly, a low growling rumble. And finally he replied.

“You know your problem? You think the only thing that matters is being the best. You think you can go round ignoring all those troublesome, painful people, and just concentrate on being _right_. But it doesn’t work, you know. There’s no point being right if a thousand people will turn round and say you must be wrong without listening to you. And alone, you’ll never find out more than a lifetime’s worth of discoveries. I’ve read you wrongly if you’ll be content with only one lifetime’s worth of knowledge.”

Marisa stared back into his dark, intense eyes. “And if you’re right? What are you proposing I should do differently? I work hard, I’m honest...”

Asriel laughed, a deep rolling sound which made her feel like a child adrift on the ocean. “Marisa, I’m not sure honesty has ever been a help to anyone, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to you. Charm them, my dear! You have the face of an angel, and a mind like a steel trap. If you used them to get people working with you, instead of driving them away, then the sky above would be your limit.” He turned to Ozymandias, who lay cautiously in the crook of Marisa’s knees. “Look at you. You should be showcasing all that’s glorious about her. Instead you skulk and hide, a strange drab brown thing. Come here.” He frowned at the monkey with an air of puzzlement. “It’s as though you’ve decided to hide your true nature just to get by without needing to deal with people. Well, it’s time you both grew up.”

He bent down to kiss Marisa, and as she closed her eyes and felt his strong lips press against hers, she suddenly felt his hand where no hand should ever be, stroking the tangled fur of Ozymandias. The shock and guilt made her leap away from him, but he was stronger than her, and pulled her back. She lost herself in the unexpected joy and deep pleasure of his touch, as he made her discover things about herself that she thought had been forever lost.

***

The rising sun found them sleeping deeply and entwined in each others’ arms. Only Stelmaria was awake, gently grooming the monkey that lay between her paws with licks of her rasping tongue. What a change had come over Ozymandias! Instead of the unkempt tangle of brown, his fur was now long and lustrous, each fine hair shining pure gold in the early morning light.

Eventually the sun drifted round, and a beam of light fell on Marisa’s face. She woke with a start, disorientated and unsure of where she was. Then the events of the previous night came back to her, and she gazed with amazement at Ozymandias. She crouched over him, touching his fur with wonder, amazed to find him so changed, and yet so much more truly himself. What had Asriel done to them?

The bell on the Pilgrim’s Tower chimed seven. Marisa jumped with shock, and Asriel stirred. “What’s wrong, Marisa? It’s barely morning, come back to bed.”

“I’ve missed our slot in the chapel. I need to irrigate the exposures every twelve hours, and they won’t let me in again until sundown. All that work, ruined! And I have to be back at Sophie’s in thirty minutes or I’ll miss breakfast and they’ll know I’ve been gone.” Ozymandias leapt into her arms chattering at her distress, and she buried her face in his golden fur, lest Asriel see her tears.

“Hush now, don’t worry.” Asriel put his strong arms around her. “You may not be allowed in until the evening, but one of us is a Jordan scholar, remember? Just explain what needs doing, and I’ll do it after breakfast.”

Marisa looked up at him gratefully. Ten minutes later she was washed and dressed, had hastily scrawled down her experimental procedure, and was running back along the cobbled streets to St Sophia’s.

***

Marisa didn’t see Asriel over the next few days. She took to arriving early and leaving late at the Chapel in the hopes their paths would cross, but he didn’t appear. “Still, Ozymandias, he did keep his word and refresh the irrigation perfectly, and he’s going North at the end of the week. He must just be terribly busy. So all we can do is make sure that when he does see us, he’s impressed.”

He would have to be blind not to be, for Marisa now was barely recognisable as the pretty but drab teenager in the raincoat. She had taken Asriel’s advice to heart, and the dull clothes she had arrived in Oxford in were now cast aside in favour of smartly cut summer dresses and delicate jewels. Her dark hair had been trimmed into a sleek bob, showing off her beautiful features, and wherever she went in Oxford heads turned to stare at the stunning young woman and her glowing gold dæmon. The scholars were entranced, for she was kind and attentive as well as attractive, and it was the least they could do to help her with her studies, fetch books for her, explain their research and introduce her to their eminent friends.

Marisa thrived on the attention. To study in Oxford had been fun, but this! It was like breaking out from underwater into the sun for the first time. A smile, a laugh, and doors which last week were locked firmly against her swung open like a blossoming flower. Nothing could remove the dull longing she felt to see Asriel again, but she was enjoying her new powers so much. And as she charmed a string of Oxford scholars to do her bidding, she became more certain that it would be just as easy to charm Asriel when next they met.

Time for Marisa continued to pass quicky, and soon it was the day before Asriel was due to leave for the North. Marisa had arranged lunch at the Anbaric Park with the chaplain of Jordan, and was waiting for him in his study, engrossed in a text on elementary philosophical mathematics. At first when the lecture theatre next door erupted into applause she registered it only as a disruption, but as the debate grew louder it soon became too difficult to ignore. She wandered over to the woman’s gallery, and saw below her Asriel, lecturing to a group of scholars, in front of a slide highlighting some of the finer points of anbarographic saturation. At first she was so pleased to see him again, proud and regal in the light from the projector, that she did not pay much attention to the detail of his talk. But it was not long before she understood the flow of his argument, and soon she was listening horror-struck, Ozymandias pressed against the glass of the gallery with his horny claws scrabbling futilely against the glass. The movement must have caught his eye, for he looked straight at her, standing there in the gallery and smiled, that lazy sardonic smile which she had last seen when lying in his bed at Jordan.

The talk finished; the scholars filed out, chattering away to each other. She forced herself into the lecture theatre against the flow, barely hearing the conversation around her. “Revolutionary”… “Heretical”… “Inspirational”…“Dangerous”… the talk had certainly left its mark on the audience. The last few scholars and their dæmons slipped out, and she was left at the top of the steps in the now empty lecture theatre, looking down at where Asriel was packing up his slides below.

“How dare you?” she cried, “How _dare_ you?”

Asriel looked up. “Oh, I’m glad you made the talk. I’d have invited you, but in the circumstances it didn’t seem wise. Still, you’re probably the only one in the room who understood the full implications of the work, and it’s always good to have an educated audience.”

Her eyes flashed, dark and angry. “You stole my work. You set me up in the chapel, lured me back to your room, seduced me, got me to explain the most technical parts of my experiments and then presented it all as your own! You weren’t truly interested in anything about me other than getting your hands on my results.” Ozymandias sprang down the stairs at Stelmaria, teeth bared and claws outstretched.

Asriel laughed shortly. “Marisa, if that was all I’d wanted I’d have just read that drab little notebook that you were forever leaving by your experiment. If you didn’t want people to learn from you, there’s no need to make it quite so easy for them.”

His laughter was like naphtha on the flames of her anger, and she launched herself at him, beating her hands against his chest, desperate to wipe that sardonic smile off his face and make him hurt like he had hurt her. But he caught her hands and held them down, and he was stronger than her, leaving her to squirm impotently in his grasp like a snared animal.

“I shan’t waste time talking to you if you’re going to behave like an insolent child in a temper tantrum. I did the right thing, and when you calm down long enough to think about it rationally you’ll eventually agree. Firstly, that research was controversial and important. Who would listen to it from a slip of a girl on a summer placement at Sophie’s? Not that crowd. If you really cared about the impact your research can make on the world, you should be grateful that it’s been presented by someone with an academic reputation, who can force them to listen and take it seriously. And secondly it’s almost certainly heretical. Now, I’m a man of independent means with my first degree already assured. If the Magisterium take an interest in me now, at least people will notice. Whereas if that sort of research came from someone unknown, someone who did not even have her place at Oxford secured yet? I think there’d be a great interest in making sure that that place was never secured.”

Asriel slowly let go of Marisa’s hands. She stood quietly shaking, and he reached out a hand to smooth back her hair. “So you see, it was all for the best.”

“All for the best,” Marisa muttered, as his hand ran down her cheek and tilted her chin up, turning her tear-stained face towards his own. Their eyes met, and she felt herself begin to drown again in his dark power. Then she spat full in his face and rushed up and out of the lecture theatre, gathering Ozymandias up in her arms.

She paused at the door, looking back at him. “If it was so self-evidently for the best, you could have talked to me about it! We could have agreed it together, instead of you lying to me and manipulating me and treating me like a child! I’m glad you’re going to the North tomorrow and I’ll be out of this city before you come back. I hope you never come back! I hope a cliff-ghast dines on your soul, although it’ll find little enough to feast on!”

Through all this speech, the dark eyes of Ozymandias never left the green ones of Stelmaria, and the sadness in the eyes of one was reflected in the eyes of the other. Then with a swing of the faded wooden door Marisa had gone, leaving only the trace of her scent behind her.

Asriel walked over to Stelmaria and laid a hand on her head. “Well, that wasn’t quite the way I’d planned it. She’s going to grow up to be quite an amazing woman if she manages to get that temper of hers under control. I do hope that we meet again…”

Slowly and calmly, he packed away his slides, and left the lecture theatre with his dæmon padding alongside him. The room lay still and empty, illuminated by a single sunbeam from a high window, and nothing moved except the slow dance of golden dust.


End file.
